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Action At First & Independences (Right Outside Rayburn)   Action in front of Hart Parking Garage                        
         

                                                Press Conference for Stop-loss Congress
 

Info on the Stop-Loss Congress Action, March 10-12

Stop-Loss Congress
This March, while tens of thousands of Americans in Washington, D.C., and all over the United States will be participating in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience to protest the ongoing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and involuntarily deployed U.S. soldiers and innocent civilian victims will begin another year of occupation, torture, and murder, U.S. congress members will be on vacation (from the 15th to 30th, technically a "district work period"), ignoring the killing and suffering they have enabled, supported, and financed.

To intensify the irony, Congress has condoned a widespread stop-loss policy in the military which requires soldiers to involuntarily extend their tours and prolong the killing. It is time to Stop-Loss Congress!

On Monday March 10, and Tuesday March 11, we will deliver "official" stop-loss notices to all members of Congress in their Capitol Hill offices. These will notify them that all of their LEAVES, VACATIONS and HOME VISITS HAVE BEEN CANCELLED until further notice. Just as they require that active-duty personnel endure involuntary extensions of their tours of duty, we, the people for whom they work, are notifying them that they, too, will have their tours of duty INVOLUNTARILY EXTENDED until every foreign soldier and mercenary is out of Iraq, and home. When all the troops and contractors get home, then Congress can go home, and no sooner.

On Wednesday March 12, we will take nonviolent action on Capitol Hill, to ensure that, while thousands of Iraqis, Afghanis, and foreign invaders die and are injured for life, the members of Congress and their staffs do not go home but remain to DO THEIR DUTY, and immediately end the funding of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. No members of Congress goes home until THE TROOPS COME HOME.

More information at http://www.resistinmarch.org/

What is Stop-Loss?

Stop-loss, in the United States military, is the involuntary extension of a service member's enlistment contract in order to retain them beyond the normal end term of service (ETS) or the ceasing of a permanent change of station (PCS) move for a member still in military service. It was first significantly used just before and during the first Persian Gulf War. Since then, it has been used during American military deployments to Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo during the 1990s and extensively after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the subsequent War on Terror.

Federal courts have consistently found that military service members contractually agree that their term of service may be involuntarily extended, however the issue is still being debated in the public and political arena.

Stop-loss, as well as the practice of "involuntary extension", have been controversial. In a campaign speech in 2004, former presidential candidate John Kerry described stop-loss as a "backdoor draft."^[1] The use of stop-loss has been criticized by activists and some politicians as an abuse of the spirit of the law, on the basis that Congress has not declared war, such as is the case in the Iraq War.

More information at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-loss_policy

1.)White, John. "Soldiers Facing Extended Tours", The Washington Post, June 3, 2004. Retrieved on 2007-10-15.